The latest NewsBusted, with Jodi Miller:
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PJTV’s Andrew Klavan shines a light* the progressive mind:
*(Carbon-neutral, of course)
David Axelrod has a dream. Sadly, we instead live in a democracy.
Maybe he and Tom Friedman should start a club …or a Bund.
How to lay off hundreds of people, end a nation’s steel industry, do nothing to clean up the environment, and make-off with a billion UK Pounds, all with British Government approval.
This is where the junk science religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming has very real and very harmful effects.
(via Climategate)
Why are the DC Police enforcing sharia law and gender discrimination?
Some women who protested at the Islamic Center of Washington, wanting to be able to worship in the main prayer hall with their male counterparts, were asked to leave by the police. But they say their struggle will continue.
Carpets with intricate designs cover the floors of the main prayer hall and turquoise tiles line the walls. But the source of contention is a small room created with seven foot high wooden walls. Jannah B’int Hannah describes how she feels in there where she cannot see the imam, or leader of the mosque, speak.
“Boxed in, stifling, suffocating and totally a second class citizen,” says Hannah.
Over the weekend, Hannah and approximately 20 other women prayed in the main hall, but D.C. police were called. They asked them to leave or be arrested.
So, I guess all those “old boys’ clubs” can start barring female members again? And since when does a police force in the United States get involved with enforcing religious law? I suppose they can say they were reacting to reports of a disturbance, but the threat of arrest should only come if the women were in some way violent or threatening. As it stands, it looks like they were engaged in that age-old custom of democracy, protesting peacefully for equal treatment, freedom of worship,  and against discrimination – in this case, Islamic gender apartheid (and a hot, stuffy room).
Maybe that’s what the imam really didn’t like and so he used the law enforcement agency of a democracy to restore that discrimination.
Long live the cultural jihad.
(via Jihad Watch)
RELATED: Maybe the imam though he was in Saudi Arabia, where a religious scholar says those who advocate ending sexual segregation should be killed.
In the latest of a series of predictions that haven’t worked out and sloppy science exposed, it now turns out that President Obama won’t have to heal the planet after all… because the seas aren’t rising:
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.
The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.
At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study “strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results“. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.
Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.
Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.
In other words, “We don’t know what went wrong, just that the previous work was total bollocks.”
RELATED: In the wake of Climategate revelations at the UAE’s Climatic Research Unit, the IPCC, and now NASA, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), is calling on the Department of Justice to open an investigation. While I think it would be far more warranted than their witch-hunt against Bush Administration lawyers and CIA interrogators, I somehow doubt the DOJ under President Obama and his Attorney General will jump on this.
ASIDE: Note that the link to the quoted story is to the UK’s Guardian newspaper, which leans hard to the Left. This is yet another example of how the European, Australian, and Indian press, even those favorable toward climate alarmism, are doing a far better job covering the growing scandals than the mainstream American press, which itself is maintaining a deafening silence. It’s nothing short of ethical corruption and journalistic malpractice.
(via Fausta)
UPDATE: According to Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent Socialist-Vermont), AGW skeptics are no better than Nazis. Is that the same as being a traitor to the planet? And do I get a cool uniform?
With the enemy in their sights, Marines in Afghanistan have to consult with lawyers before opening fire.
No, I’m not joking.Â
(via Hot Air)
Conservatives booed an anti-gay bigot off the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week.
In Pakistan, four brothers beat their sibling unconscious because he refused to convert to Islam:
The four older Muslim brothers of a 26-year-old Christian beat him unconscious here earlier this month because he refused their enticements to convert to Islam, the victim told Compass.
Riaz Masih, whose Christian parents died when he was a boy, said his continual refusal to convert infuriated his siblings and the Muslim cleric who raised them, Moulvi Peer Akram-Ullah. On Feb. 8, he said, his brothers ransacked his house in this Punjab Province town 233 kilometers (145 miles) southwest of Islamabad.
âThey threatened that it was the breaking point now, and that I must convert right now or face death,â Masih said. âThey said killing an infidel is not a sin, instead itâs righteousness in the sight of Allah almighty.â
Masih begged them to give him a few minutes to consider converting and then tried to escape, but they grabbed him and beat him with bamboo clubs, leaving him for dead, he said.
Now, it’s true that the Qur’an (2:256) warns against compulsion (forced conversion):
Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.
(More commentary)
But Islamic apologists who cite this verse always seem to forget the doctrine of abrogation, in which later revelations supersede older ones. Thus the following verse (Qur’an 8:39) supersedes 2:256 because it is a later revelation:
And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah; but if they desist, then surely Allah sees what they do.
(More commentary)
“Them” includes Christians and Jews, because they were originally given Islam by Allah and his prophets, but corrupted the message. Thus, Riaz’s brothers were justified in their minds in demanding he convert and attacking him when he refused, in obedience to many injunctions in the Qur’an and the hadith (sayings of Muhammad), of which 8:39 is just an example.
Oh, I almost forgot. The misogyny part of this: In return for converting, Riaz was offered many things, including his choice of a woman. In other words, she would be nothing more than a reward, like a car or a house.
Might as well stick a price tag on her and sell her.
(via Jihad Watch)
Maybe I should avoid getting into arguments with true believers….
I’ve just finished reading David McCullough’s 1776, which tells the tale of the critical year of the American Revolution, from the Siege of Boston to the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, largely through the eyes of the nascent American Army and its commander, General George Washington.
While I love reading History, there’s been a decided lack in my education when it came to Colonial America and the Revolutionary period. That, frankly, is due to the miserable way it was taught in junior and senior high school; nothing could have been more boring. And that’s a shame because the conflicts and struggles that lead to our independence comprise a fascinating story, one that was crucial to the subsequent history of Humanity.
So, I set out several years ago to fill that lack; 1776 is the latest effort.
McCullough’s work is the story of the campaign during and following the Siege of Boston. While that ended in an American victory with the British evacuation, the subsequent tale was one of almost unremitting defeat and misery. New York City was foolishly defended and then lost in a series of battles at Brooklyn, upper Manhattan Island, and White Plains, in which the small Continental Army was almost destroyed. (Had British General Howe shown more initiative, perhaps he would have caught Washington and ended the Revolution. One of the great What-Ifs of History.) Pursued across lower New York and into New Jersey and Pennsylvania, suffering from a nearly shattered morale and plagued by desertions and refusals to reenlist, the Americans survived to score what can justifiably be called miraculous victories in the freezing cold of December and January at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey. In the wake of those battles, General Howe ordered his troops into winter quarters. The Continental Army had survived its most parlous year.
Over the course of McCullough’s narrative, we meet characters of the drama on both sides, such as General Nathanael Greene, the Quaker turned soldier who may have been the best general on our side, to the wretched Lord Rawdon, who thought the increasing number of courts-martial for rape during the New York campaign was proof of the British Army’s improving spirits.
Central to the story, however, is George Washington himself. Portrayed as an amateurish and inept strategist and tactician (Washington had never commanded an army before) whose mistakes and indecisiveness in New York nearly cost us the war, it was the strength of his character more than anything that kept the army together during its worst days. Devoted to the men under his command and to the cause, itself, Washington inspired almost instant loyalty bordering on devotion from his officers and troops. His perseverance in the face of defeat after defeat may have been his greatest quality, enabling him and his troops to carry on until fortune finally turned their way.
McCullough tells his story well, often quoting from diaries and letters from officers and soldiers on both sides. This isn’t a tale of politics and diplomacy, but that of America at arms. He tears away the softening gauze in which time shrouds all distant conflicts to let us see through their own words the suffering of the Americans, Loyalist and Rebel alike, as war consumed both property and lives. We also see the bravery and loyalty of the soldiers of both armies, from General Lord Cornwallis’ nighttime crossing of the Hudson to attack Fort Lee, to the Massachusetts fishermen and sailors who worked miracles to get the army out of New York and, later, across the Delaware in a freezing storm.
With an extensive bibliography and myriad footnotes, 1776 is a good example of popular history at its best: an exciting story, eminently readable and accessible, even to those with only the merest knowledge of our earliest history. Highly recommended, and you can buy a copy at Amazon*.
*(Dear FTC, yes, I do get a few pennies if someone actually buys the book. Oh, the horror.)
RELATED: Today is Washington’s birthday; Power Line has posted a remembrance.
Yet another example of the deep misogyny of Islamic society: fathers selling their pre-teen daughters as brides to middle-aged rapists husbands:
The Saudis really need to get an infomercial out there â and the Nation magazine and other leftist sites that apologize for Islamic gender apartheid can feature it on their webpages. It would go something like this:
A Saudi sheikh dressed slickly in Saudi garb would be sitting confidently in a chair, looking into the camera with an excited smile. He would then begin asking, with earnestness and an encouraging tone:
“Are you a pedophile? Do you like underage girls? Would you like to rape one of them â or several? And get away with it? Even have it legally sanctioned? Then Saudi Arabia is for you.”
The screen then shifts to a shopping mall filled with niqab-covered women (only the slit of the eyes showing) walking up and down in front of stores. It remains unclear what message this is supposed to denote, but the camera stays focused on these shrouded women for about ten seconds. Then a warning appears that all infidels who are interested must first convert to Islam. This is followed by a phone number appearing over a black background, indicating a contact person who can be reached. A voice then explains that this person lurks within the Saudi religious police and that he will connect interested parties to Saudi fathers intent on selling their underage girls into marriage â a standard practice in Saudi Arabia.
And yes, it’s religiously justified. Nauseating.
More bad news in the bunker, when Der Fuehrer learns that Senator Harry Reid doesn’t have much of a chance at re-election:
(via The Jawa Report)